Sesame Street’s Elmo has recently returned from visiting refugee children in Jordan. He sat with Sesame Workshop’s Executive Vice President of Global Impact, Sherrie Westin, and CEO of International Rescue Committee, David Miliband, for a Facebook live interview with CNN’s Clarissa Ward.
Sesame Street and IRC have joined in effort to start a new initiative to provide quality education to young children displaced by conflict and persecution. The team is currently a finalist for a $100 million grant from the McArthur Foundation’s 100&Change global competition. 100&Change’s goal is “to fund a single proposal that promises real and measurable progress in solving a critical problem of our time.”
Elmo was thrilled with the trip and told Ward that he met a lot of new friends:
“They like to play and learn just like Elmo and all his friends at Sesame street” Elmo said
Weston and Miliband went on to explain about 65 million people have been displaced and half of that number is children.
“Sesame has had a long history at looking at issues from a child’s perspective and given the staggering number of children who are displaced today, we knew this was an area where we really had to try to do something to help and we knew we couldn’t do it alone”
This project is meant to meant to provide educational services for these displaced children so they do not lose out on the most important years of educational development. They seek to provide the children with teachers, class rooms, and school supplies.
And today we celebrate...